


The Devil's Pitchfork: Needling the Founder in "Founder's Mutation"

by PlaidAdder



Series: X-Files Meta [37]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Review, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, founder's mutation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 00:57:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5847673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Founder’s Mutation” appears to be a deliberate attempt to puncture some of the most damaging and infuriating aspects of Chris Carter’s treatment of both sexuality and reproduction. And that it is partly because Wong is taking a few jabs at his own Founder (i.e., Carter) with “the devil’s pitchfork” that “Founder’s Mutation” is exactly what we all wanted this revival to be: just like the old X-Files, only better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil's Pitchfork: Needling the Founder in "Founder's Mutation"

 

  * It is one of life’s little ironies that I was, for a while, prevented from watching James Wong’s return to the William storyline by my own motherhood. The revival’s normal time slot is before PJ’s bedtime; and let’s face it, you don’t let an 8 year old watch The X-Files, especially not the 2016 version. But I’ve seen it at last; and the longer I sit with it, the more inclined I am to a conspiracy theory of my own.

All the writers involved in the revival were undoubtedly told about the ‘emotional arc’ and that William will be involved in it. This means that to some extent they were all going to be forced to deal with the unholy mess that Chris Carter made of the William storyline in seasons 8 and 9. As I have said…oh, so many times…the abomination that was the seasons 8/9 mythology was merely the culmination of [an obsession with reproductive technology that runs all the way through the series](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/97581304529/the-mother-of-all-metas-x-files-william-and). After Scully’s season 2 abduction, the horror of the alien mythology storyline became increasingly bound up with pregnancy, and specifically with the medical manipulation of women’s bodies and the embryos/fetuses/children with which they are impregnated. Carter’s view of all that manipulation was unremittingly negative, as is in keeping with the show’s overall view of sexuality and reproduction, which seems to hew very closely to orthodox Catholic dogma. On the X-Files, medical intervention in a pregnancy is always malignant, intrusive, nonconsensual, sinister, and monstrous. And on the X-Files as Chris Carter ran it, sex–especially for Scully–was also always a problem. In addition to postponing Mulder and Scully’s consummation for longer than anyone else would have thought probable, Carter refused to allow either Mulder or Scully to enjoy their sexual relationship in any overt way, and in fact did his best to suggest that it had never happened–in part by persistently presenting Scully as the Virgin Mary and her children as virgin births (go watch “Christmas Carol,” “Emily,” and “Existence” if you don’t believe me). 

OK. Well, let’s remember that James Wong was having none of that bullshit when he co-wrote “Never Again” with Glen Morgan–an episode that was supposed to include a sex scene for Scully, and which remains the strongest indication from series 1-9 that Scully in fact had a libido and was occasionally moved to act on it. And keep that in mind when I tell you that to me, “Founder’s Mutation” appears to be a deliberate attempt to puncture some of the most damaging and infuriating aspects of Chris Carter’s treatment of both sexuality and reproduction. And that it is partly because Wong is taking a few jabs at his own Founder (i.e., Carter) with “the devil’s pitchfork” that “Founder’s Mutation” is exactly what we all wanted this revival to be: just like the old X-Files, only better.

The tone is set immediately in the cold open, as we witness the death of a strung-out, overworked, miserable Sanjay. (I note in passing that unlike X-Files Classic, which typically cast performers of color only when it was necessary to the plot, the cast of “Founder’s Mutation” includes characters and actors of color even though it doesn’t ‘have to,’ and that I for one was very glad to see that Wong had installed this update.) When his friend asks Sanjay whether his “humdinger” of the weekend was “business or pleasure,” Sanjay mutters, “I haven’t known pleasure for quite some time.” A life without pleasure is not healthy or sustainable–as we soon discover, when poor Sanjay is driven to lobotomy himself just to get the ringing out of his ears. Gupta’s meeting with Mulder confirms that Sanjay and he had done nothing “physical” during Sanjay’s decline–that Sanjay was too worried about ‘his kids’ to take pleasure in sex.

Contra the fear and hatemongering that the religious right does about the pernicious effect of queer people on children, “Founder’s Mutation” presents Sanjay, poor closeted bastard that he is, as apparently the only person at Nugenics who actually cares about the test subjects **as children**. And again, this sounds a note that reverberates through the whole episode: that in all this obsessing over conception and pregnancy, one thing that “champions of the unborn” forget is that these embryos by whose welfare they are so consumed eventually become children who could also use some help and support in getting through life. Just as the religious right’s “championing of the unborn” is fatally undermined by its callous disregard for children–especially poor children who would benefit from public assistance, a higher minimum wage, affordable health care, a quality public school system, and many other things that these “champions” do their level best to destroy–Dr. Goldman clearly has no compassion for or interest in the children his experiments grow up to be. Sanjay’s the one driving himself into overwork because he wants to save their lives; and of course his reward is to be driven to suicide because Kyle, having correctly identified Sanjay as sympathetic to his cause, pushes him too hard.

Mulder’s interaction with Gupta, which is priceless, is another dig at the Founder. Because we’re used to Mulder and his obsessions, we never question for a moment that his interview with Gupta is going to be another conversation with a soon-to-be-doomed informant. When you go back and watch that scene again, though, it’s clear that everything Gupta says is coming from a completely different perspective. He stops Mulder from introducing himself, because he prefers these one-offs to be anonymous encounters. He asks Mulder, “What do you want?” When Mulder says he wants to go somewhere private and talk, Gupta says, “I don’t know you well enough,” meaning, for God’s sake man, let’s at least chat for a few minutes before getting down to business, do you think I am an animal? When Mulder says, “You can trust me, I’m safe,” from Gupta’s point of view he’s both promising anonymity and informing Gupta of his HIV status and his intention to use protection. And after a moment’s hesitation, Gupta agrees…cause really, I know he’s 50, but it’s Mulder. Who wouldn’t?

And then, after the misunderstanding finally comes to light, Gupta gives Mulder that priceless speech about letting go of self-hatred and freeing himself, tapping Mulder over his heart and saying, “The truth is in here.” Mulder finds all this very ironic. But really, Gupta might just as well be a queer angel sent from heaven to tell Mulder what all the fans know: follow your heart straight to Scully and forget about the rest of Chris Carter’s bullshit.

And here’s the beautiful thing about that: The entire resolution of the case depends upon the fact that instead of being freaked out, frightened, or disgusted by Gupta’s attempt to blow him in a supply closet, Mulder has the compassion to tell Gupta about Sanjay’s death. Somehow in the time between Gupta reaching for his belt buckle and the closet door opening, Mulder has put it together: this relationship was never acknowledged, nobody in Sanjay’s family knows about it, nobody is going to tell this poor guy that his lover is dead unless he reads about it in the papers. Mulder only solves the case, or gets any closer to understanding what happened with his own child, because he does something nobody else is going to do for Gupta: he recognizes Sanjay as Gupta’s partner and as someone who has a right to know about Sanjay’s death. 

All the way through this episode, we can see Wong trying to shift the focus of that ridiculous Alien Baby storyline away from Carter’s obsession with pregnancy itself in order to focus on the people who are written out of right-wing narratives about reproduction: the mother and the born child. That’s part of the meaning of that little exchange that melted everyone’s hearts, when Scully asked Mulder if she was “just an incubator” and he says, “You’re never just anything to me, Scully.” Unlike most of seasons 8 & 9, “Founder’s Mutation” allows Scully–albeit in fantasy–to be a mother instead of an incubator. It gives Scully, and the viewers, something that seasons 8 & 9 never gave anyone: the chance for her to be a parent in an ordinary, unremarkable, and (until the bitter end) trauma-free way. I have complained in the past about how not an ounce of effort was spent on developing Scully’s relationship to William in series 9, and how Scully was never allowed to just enjoy doing any of the things with William that mothers of infants usually do with their babies. Baby William was treated as a symbol and a prop and a source of terror. It wasn’t until Duchovny took the helm in “William” that we ever saw Scully have a tender, poignant, moment of real contact with her baby. “Founder’s Mutation” makes William an individual (albeit idealized) child and shows us Mulder and Scully acting out the love, pride, and pleasure that we feel in the routine tasks and unremarkable moments of parenting. For a few minutes, each of them gets to experience parenthood as something other than trauma and terror, just as William gets to be something other than the object of Chris Carter’s reproductive obsessions.

Similarly, the case plot of “Founder’s Mutation” indicts both the government-medical complex and the Catholic Church (through Our Lady of Sorrows hospital) for betraying and destroying the women who are carrying these supposedly precious “unborn.” Agnes–good Catholic name, means “lamb” in Latin, Christ is the Lamb of God, boy does she get slaughtered–says to Scully, with telling emphasis, “ **my baby.”** Scully says, “Of course your baby;” but in a Catholic hospital setting there is no ‘of course’ about that. The Sister’s contempt for the women they’re ‘helping’ is the emotional correlative of the ruthless exploitation to which the children will be subjected once they are ‘given up,’ a process which Agnes suggests is only ever marginally consensual. Scully’s line to Mrs. Goldman–”a mother never forgets”–obviously has tragic relevance to both of their lives; but it’s also about every woman who has been pressured in one way or another into giving up a child she might have wanted but was–because of church or state intervention–unable to keep. 

And this is why “Founder’s Mutation” is so much better, and so much more important to the future of this show, than “My Struggle.” It shows that The X-Files can actually grow and change, while still preserving all the things that made it The X-Files. While poking Chris Carter’s reproductive nightmare with the devil’s pitchfork, Wong also gives us all the things we’ve been longing for: Mulder/Scully banter, Mulder and Scully in Skinner’s office, Mulder swiping things from crime scenes, Scully kicking ass to save Mulder’s, Scully doing an autopsy (SCULLY DOING AN AUTOPSY! I nearly wept), and those moments where everything slows down and it’s all just about the depth of love and loyalty that these two no-longer-together people still have for each other. 

Now, because it’s the X-Files, there’s still some over-the-top horror–don’t try to give yourself a C-section with a knife, kids, you will bleed to death and probably maim the baby–and of course a tie-in to the alien hybrid plot (apparently still canon even under the new mythology rules). And it is a bit ominous that in his fantasy, Mulder is watching _2001_ with William. _2001_ ends with a shot of a giant fetus floating in space, which was referenced in the credits to the X-Files’ very unfortunate 8th season:

That and the parade of ‘failed experiments’ at Goldman’s lab suggest that we may be returning to the ‘alien baby’ theory of William’s origin, which was developed in the Season 8 episode “Per Manum,” in which Scully is horrified to find herself surrounded by jars full of malformed fetuses:

But–and this is really my point–in “Founder’s Mutation,” they aren’t just scary props. Certainly we are invited to be horrified by their abnormalities. But we also see Scully interact with one of them and are reminded that in fact they are children, with their own lives and spirits and needs, and that for as for Scully, if we can’t get past our initial horror and recognize that, then we don’t deserve a solution to this case.

Wong can’t, of course, *really* kill the show’s Founder, though of course this is precisely what “Founder’s Mutation” achieves in fantasy. But he’s created enough room inside Chris Carter’s obsessions to bring this show to life, and for that every fan of the X-Files should send him a fruit basket of gratitude.





End file.
